Just to be clear.. when people ask for something free I would say Macrium Reflect..
I have used it and it works extremely well.. however you need to understand what you are getting.. that is whole disk backup. And whole disk restore.
Disk restore being whole disk is done from a CD with a linux or windows PE boot environment on it. And that is actually very easy .. the software is all included to make the disk.
This is not however how you do backups for a daily use machine.
To get incremental backup and restore you need to pay for it. This is fair enough, as the free version can then simply be upgraded by paying for a key.
There are so many backup programs for windows I cannot keep up now (since I changed over to Mac I don't even care).. but whatever is the recommend best backup software in the review sites.. buy that.. it has to have a feature to backup to network drives.. all do.
As an alternative to a free one, look at the genie timeline free version.
http://www.genie9.com/free_products/free_timeline.aspx
Expect to be harassed forevermore to pay them some money.
Free is only a marketing tool after all. I have never used this one. In fact the software I used for free is simple backup of your user folder.. and it created a winzip file on whatever drive you liked. So the idea is do a full disk backup and then just backup your user directory. This works extremely well if you use good file practice and store everything where you should.
Windows Professional is a poor upgrade for home premium if all you are after is MSbackup which must be the most pathetic backup software in the history of the universe. Don't even think about it. The only reason you buy pro is to have server login.
